A few years ago, I took a little job accompanying for a Suzuki strings studio. It’s challenging, but learning so many new pieces, and polishing my accompanying skills is so much fun. So this week, as I’ve been practicing for hours each day in preparation for the big recital, I remembered my own accompanists from years ago.

In college, I never truly appreciated how much an accompanist does. Being a typical singer, I would forget to count half way through the long notes, and fudge a bit (for breath-sake) on the odd rhythms. Tricky entrances were my worst fear. I also chose the songs with the most difficult accompaniment because they were the most beautiful. And somehow, they kept up with me and never complained.

Little did I realize the possible headaches and eye rolls that my poor accompanists held back for my sake. And now that I am the one sitting at the piano most of the time, I have learned a few things.

1) Turning pages is hard and sometimes impossible if you don’t have a nifty assistant beside you. Although frowned upon, I use the spread out copies method for the most difficult, long pieces. I’ve also learned the folded corners trick and the memorize-the-first-measure-of-the-next-page trick. Who would’ve imagined that practicing flawless page turns sometimes takes more practice than the actual song?

2) A good accompanist must be all-knowing. My part, your part, everybody’s part and be prepared for them to mess up.

3) When they do mess up (not if), you must use mind-reading techniques to decide how they’re going to react before they do it.

4) You must learn the piece at every speed imaginable. Child A studied diligently and learned the piece at the perfect speed, Child B takes it a bit too slow because the fingerings are tricky, and Child C thinks that this is a roller derby (fast, lightening speed, and haltingly slow).

5) You Tube can be your best friend. Are you bad at multi-tasking on those more tricky pieces and humming over your piano part doesn’t work? I am. That’s why I type it into You Tube and listen to 3 people butcher it before I find a decent recording.

6) Trying to convince a parent that his/her child is not perfect is not a good idea. I have one parent in particular, that each year, while I’m accompanying for her child, thinks that every mistake is mine. Not a big deal until she refuses to pay me because there is no way it’s because her daughter hasn’t learned her piece well enough. Again, if I could mind-read her child, this would be no problem, but alas, it is not.

7) If you do make a mistake, everyone will notice and likely remember. If you don’t mess up, few will notice that you played at all. It makes me laugh, but it’s completely true.

This is my heartfelt thank you to my accompanists (Tim, Tim, and Roy) for not killing me during college. You really showed me the grace of God.

This year, as I was going through some health problems, I had little extra energy for my normal level of creativity with my students, so I looked to use other people’s creative ideas. Here are my favorites that I used frequently this year.

1. First is a site called Joy has some wonderful ideas and helpful resources for studio teachers. From practical evaluation forms to games and lesson planning, this is a wonderful resource and all of them are free!

2.From, I’ve found a kindred spirit. Her teacher label is “Aussie Music Teacher.” She is constantly adding theory games, great music ideas, and other great music-teaching resources to her catalog—many of which are free!!

3. And last but in no way least, is another wonderfully creative and free site filled with more great resources and games for more student and parent engaged learning.

If you’re serious about wanting to sing but have little money, this is for you.

Recently, I’ve had several people get in touch with me, desperately wanting to gain singing skills but having little to no money.  Here are my recommendations for the impecunious wanna-be singer.

  1. Find and join a church choir or two.  Most churches have a choir and they are absolutely free.  This is a good way to begin learning to sing with others, following direction, and learning some musical basics.  Sometimes, you can find a church choir with excellent instruction that can help you on your way to meeting your musical goals. The best thing that you can do is sing, sing, sing.
  2. If you’re not religious, there are community choirs.  Some are free and some require a small fee to join and others only accept auditioned singers. Many of these choirs are good to get you started on the basics.  Again, the best thing that you can do is sing a lot.
  3. If you’re needing to learn about of music theory, there are many online games and tools to learn.
  4. If you are in school or college, join the choir, chorus, or lessons.  Most schools offer them as an elective (thus free, or small fee).
  5. Once you’ve got a little confidence built up, find a few friends and sing at a nursing home.  This is a great way to get experience singing for a more generous crowd and many times, singing through interruptions.
  6. Once you’ve got your musical feet under you, try a tougher crowd: family or friends.  They will most likely give you an honest opinion about your sound: whether good or bad.
  7. If you’re feeling confident, try karaoke with friends.  This too is a great place to build some confidence in performing with little judgment.

There are many more options, but these are the ones that first jump to mind.  Best of luck in your singing adventures!!

I have a few students now that require much more daily lesson planning than most other students. They have various disabilities ranging from mild learning disabilities to more severe mental, physical, or visual disabilities. These are in some ways, my favorite piano/voice lessons to teach because these students work hard and really want to be here. The following is a helpful page that I came across while searching for ideas in working with the visually impaired. It is written by a professor of Music in South Carolina that has some very good thoughts on ways to teach most efficiently for students with special needs. Most of these I have intuitively tried to implement, but some I have not thought of on my own. If you are a teacher, I hope that you can find these ideas helpful and if you are a parent looking for a teacher, I hope that you can use some of these thoughts as guidelines in what to look for in a piano teacher. Enjoy!

Are you trying to find a piano teacher for your child but know nothing about piano? Here are a few questions that you might want to know and a few possible answers that you might hear.

1. What methods does the teacher use when he or she teaches? The teacher might mention some of the following.

Classical method:
This is the most common method for piano teachers. This involves teaching sight reading, rhythms, finger/hand technique and theory.
Pros: A student of the classical method has a very well-rounded understanding of music.
Cons: Students don’t learn how to play lead sheets (or real-life music) or improvise.

Suzuki method: this method is mainly training the child by ear and having much parental involvement.
Pros: The parent is highly involved in the child’s music training. The child focuses more on good technique and learns things by ear.
Cons: The child does not usually learn to sight-read notes. This is a major hindrance to children using this method unless it is combined with note reading exercises.

Simply Music (or the Australian method)
This method teaches how to read lead sheet and improvisational playing through chordal understanding.
Pros: the student can play many well-known songs quickly. The student learns chord use and lead sheet reading early, and eventually learn to transpose. Much is learned by ear. The student learns improvisation early on, jazz techniques and accompaniment techniques. It is recommended for children that struggle with normal piano techniques.
Cons: Although this method is strong on teaching in lead sheet format, students do not learn how to read traditional two-handed music. The area of classical techniques and sight-reading is very minimal.

Kodaly method: A method designed more for singing. Most know it as the Do-Re-Mi method. It uses speech patterns to help children connect with rhythm and notes. It’s unlikely that a piano teacher will mention this one, but there it is just in case.
Pros: It’s highly effective to help children feel and understand beat.
Cons: The names used for rhythms (like ti-ti to signify 1 and for eighth notes) and note names (do for c, etc…) is somewhat confusing for children if they are going to switch over to classical method at any point.

The next two methods are mainly used in the classroom, but I have heard teachers mention these methods when talking to parents interested in lessons. These teachers are taking advantage of the parents ignorance because the parents don’t know that these are not regularly used in piano lessons.

Dalcrow method: this method combines movement with music (used mostly in classrooms)
Pros: helps children to feel a steady beat.
Cons: You probably won’t do much dancing for piano lessons

Orff: Using musical instruments to play patterns of music.
Pros: It goes well with Dalcrow and Kodaly.
Cons: Again, not used in piano lessons.

I use a combination method of the kodaly method for beginners (to establish feel of beat), classical method for all, and Australian method for older students (after they are proficient with in their theory, rhythms and sight reading).

Many teachers say that they use a combination method. Don’t let them stop there. Ask them about specifics like those question 2.

2. Does the teacher focus on ear training, sight-reading, hand/finger/playing technique, rhythms and theory?
Each one of these is very important.

3. What books does the teacher use?
Although the books that they use do not matter so much, sometimes teachers use the books to describe their methods. For example, the teacher might say, I use Alfred’s basic piano library, Bastien series or the Piano Adventures series. There are plenty of other good ones out there, but keep in mind that you want to know what they teach.

4. How much do the lessons cost and how long is the lesson? Depending on the teacher’s degree, location, and demand, lessons can range anywhere from $15-65 per half hour or hour lesson. The current average for Lancaster, PA is between $20-35 per half hour.

5. At what age, does the teacher recommend giving lessons?
My personal preference is begin when the child can read or the age 6. Generally, they are much better equipped to start at 6 then at 5.

6. How much should you as the parent be involved?
Depending on the teacher, you might be highly involved or not. It depends on what you want and what the teacher allows.

7. What are the suggested requirements for the student’s practice?
For young students (6-7) that are just beginning, I usually recommend 10-15 minutes of practice a day. For most other students, 30-45 minutes, and those that are serious and able, 1 hour.

Have you ever thought of becoming a professional whistler?

Or how about a throat singer?

Just recently I had a student tell me,  “I don’t like my voice. I’m hoping that it will start to sound different after taking lessons for awhile.”  Unfortunately, this is how many, many people feel about their own singing voice.  Thus, much of my job as a teacher is to help my students appreciate their own voice and gain confidence in using it.  One of the first things I tell students is that “if you think that you are here to learn to sound like _(insert favorite singer’s name here)__, you’re going to be disappointed.  I’m here to help you find YOUR voice and to learn how to use it’s full potential. Who knows?  You may end up loving your voice more than so-and-so’s *wink*.”

Here is what one very wise teacher (Catherine McNeela) has to say.

This comes from a helpful music teacher’s blog

This past summer, I had the opportunity to teach far outside of the box.  There were several students that expressed a desire to learn to play the piano and were all very eager to do so, the only  difficulty was, most of them did not have hands or had only partial hands.  This was a new challenge that I had not previously faced, but was excited about this opportunity nonetheless.  Thus, with insight from their mom (who said that her children were inspired by this man), we found an adjustable stool, I rearranged and wrote new music to make it physically possible to play, and they learned to play with their toes. It was wonderful to see how much progress they were able to make over just one summer!

So what is the point?  It took extra time, me getting over my dislike of feet, and learning to understand how much each student could be pushed and what was actually possible.  I had to be flexible and willing to delve into the territory of the unknown (creativity).  This is not to toot my own horn, but simply to say, if you are willing to try something new, wonderful things can happen.

Many times, I come across students that have no “disabilities,” but are just as handicapped by their lack of self-confidence.  This is one of the most common things that I see as a vocal teacher.  How you think, affects how you sing.  If you think you can conquer a high note (that is of course, within your range), than it’s much more possible to do that.  Many times, students look at a note and because it looks high on the staff, they can’t seem to reach it because they don’t think they can (even though they warmed up much higher than that minutes before).  Thus, part of my job as a teacher is to be the cheerleader, the counselor, the coach.  Sometimes, lessons end up being more of a pep talk than anything else.  And if I’m willing to be flexible with the time, and am willing to set aside goals for the lesson, sometimes those pep talks are the turning points for students.  With those students that tend to be high stress, it helps to be silly, joke, and do lots of breathing, stretching, and relaxation exercises for they even play or sing one note.  It takes time from the lesson, but it’s very important.

A good example of this is an adult student that I taught.  When she first began taking voice lessons, she was not able to sing above an F4. She had a big personality, and a big speaking voice, but her range was very, very small (less than one octave) and singing anywhere above F4 was very quite and barely audible.  After a few weeks of trying out that new higher part of her voice, and after much encouragement, she was able to use it.  It took many times of my saying, “You may not like the sound at first, but keep using it and it will get stronger and stronger.”

To conclude, if you have the opportunity to work with someone that has a physical or mental disability, or if they are just “stuck,” don’t be afraid to try new things.  Good luck!

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Sifting Through Social Noise

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Recent years have radically changed the way people socialize; in parts of the developed world that have good broadband and cellular penetration, the average person now spends more time on online social networks than on physical meetings with acquaintances outside their immediate family.

“We were socializing before social networks,” Prof. Sujay Sanghavi states. “But now we can automatically capture fine details of social interaction, such as when someone views a photo and how they share and interact with the image.”

The problem now is the issue of information overload.

“If 1,000 friends on Facebook all post something, not all of it is relevant to you. Being shown everything is pretty useless and degrades your social experience,” Prof. Sanghavi mentions. This is where his research team steps in, using the fine-grained recording of user interactions to better select the most relevant people and information for any given person. Using a series of algorithms, Prof. Sanghavi and team have explored three major ways to bring sense to large-scale social networks.

The first problem in social networks is to find communities – sets of users that share denser connections amongst themselves as compared to with the general populace.

Sociology recognizes that connections that form part of a community are often more predictive of user tastes and future connections. But finding these communities in large graphs is both computationally and statistically challenging.

The WNCG team developed a new graph-clustering technique with widespread applications affecting community detection, user-profiling, link prediction and collaborative filtering. By posing graph clustering as a convex optimization problem, Sanghavi and his team were able to both reach globally optimal solutions with better statistical properties and provide an algorithm that easily scales and parallelizes.

The second problem Prof. Sanghavi’s team works on is the task of finding the social graph from user behavior. In particular, the social graph is valuable, but is often proprietary and not accessible; individual user actions however may be less so. For example, a network provider will have access to user activity levels, but not the social graph. The research of Sanghavi’s team enables the learning of a social graph from data on user behavior, even when it is not clear who those users are reacting to.

The core idea of this research is to study cascades, which are actions like sharing, liking and buying that spread through the network because people follow the lead of relevant friends. Sanghavi’s team developed new ways to find the graph on which cascades spread, when only information about who participated in the cascade, but not why they participated, is available.

One example of such a cascade is when users switch cellphone providers, which is a common occurrence outside the USA, based on the switching patterns of their friends. Inferring the underlying network of such influences is highly valuable.

The research does not strictly impact social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter, but reaches into the fields of e-commerce, security and peer-to-peer networks. By determining and predicting how information spreads on a large scale, influential nodes can be targeted, which are useful to viral marketing and predicting top-sellers on social buying sites such as Groupon. This research also has its mathematical roots in human disease propagation, as well as the propagation of social networks.

The third major challenge facing social networks today is the automated assigning of topics to content, according to WNCG Profs. Sujay Sanghavi and Sanjay Shakkottai. There is now a vast corpus of uncategorized images and videos, both public and private, on social networks. Finding out topics like “outdoors,” “kids,” “water” and others would make the information we see and search for more meaningful.

The current method for automatic topic modeling employed by search engines and marketing strategists is based on content like news articles.

“Topic modeling for news articles is easier because you have access to words, which tell you topics. It’s much harder with pictures, because we don’t have words,” Prof. Sanghavi states.

Computer vision by itself, according to Prof. Sanghavi, is not complex enough to handle the task of categorizing these visual elements into specific topics.

“Standard image processing will extract items and those items will look the same for any two people, whether it’s me or President Obama. We will look very much the same, as long as we are both people in a certain background. With image processing it’s hard to get features indicative of underlying semantic topics,” Prof. Sanghavi mentions.

Profs. Sanghavi and Shakkottai are working on a solution that circumvents the need for words and uses people’s reactions to and interactions with pictures and videos to infer content topics accordingly. For example, if someone is interested in sports and they share a football video that is later shared and commented on primarily by other sports fans, this new system of topic modeling can infer the video is about sports.

The solution, according to Sanghavi and Shakkottai, is two-fold. The pair developed an algorithm that determines first what topics a user is interested in and second, what topics are in the content a user is viewing, though neither answer is initially known.

“The idea is that we don’t try to get indicative features directly from the content,” Prof. Sanghavi states. “Instead, we use the fact that many people see these pictures and react to them. At a high level, the idea is to use the user as a word; her interest in a video is mathematically just as indicative of underlying semantics as the presence of a word in a news article.”

WNCG’s research has the potential to revolutionize the current search engine system. Instead of searching for keywords based on count profiles, users can search for more general topics. The research team’s output could be a key component for social search and finding content generated by a user’s friends and acquaintances.


US confirms Trump’s meeting with Imran Khan

Washington/Islamabad: US President Donald Trump will welcome Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan to

the White House on July 22, the White House confirmed Wednesday.

The White House statement comes a day after US State Department denied any knowledge of PM Khan’s visit

to the US.

During a weekly briefing, the US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, when asked what meetings

had been scheduled for PM Khan’s visit, had replied, “To my knowledge, that has actually not been confirmed

by the White House.”

“We don’t have anything to announce here from the State Department,” she had said.

stability, and economic prosperity to a region that has seen far too much conflict,” White House said in a

statement late Wednesday.

The statement said that PM Khan and President Trump will discuss a range of issues, including counter-

terrorism, defense, energy and trade with the goal of creating the conditions for a peaceful South Asia.

Meanwhile, a foreign ministry statement said Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit the United States on the

invitation of President Donald Trump, on July 21-23.

This would be the first summit-level engagement between Pakistan and the United States since both leaders

assumed their respective offices, the ministry said in a statement.

During the visit, Prime Minister Khan and President Trump would have wide-ranging interaction at the White

House on 22 July 2019 covering bilateral and regional matters.

The Prime Minister will also be meeting prominent members of the U.S. Congress, corporate leaders and

opinion makers as well as members of the Pakistani diaspora, the statement said.

During his various engagements in Washington, the Prime Minister will outline his vision of “NayaPakistan”

and underscore the importance Pakistan attaches to a broader and multi-faceted relationship with the United

In the regional context, the Prime Minister will underscore Pakistan’s commitment to peace and stability and

the importance of constructive engagement to promote a political solution in Afghanistan. He will also

highlight Pakistan’s policy of “peaceful neighbourhood” aimed at resolving disputes through dialogue and

promoting the vision of peace, progress and prosperity in South Asia and beyond.

The Prime Minister’s visit will help renew and reinvigorate long-standing ties between Pakistan and the

United States. It will contribute towards building a broad-based, long-term and enduring partnershipbetween

the two countries on the basis of mutual interest and mutual benefit.


article about artSearch Arts & Actions Journal articles from 2003 to 2010. 2 If on expiry of the probationary interval a continuation of the probation assistance or the conduct orders is considered to be needed in order to scale back the chance of further offences when it comes to Article sixty four paragraph 1, the courtroom could on the request of the manager authority lengthen the probationary interval by an extra two to 5 years.

While the definition of art has modified over the years, the field of art historical past has developed to permit us to categorize adjustments in art over time and to better perceive how art shapes and is shaped by the inventive impulses of artists.

5 As a substitute of the execution of the sentence the court docket might order an in-patient therapeutic measure under Articles fifty nine-61 if it is to be anticipated that this may reduce the chance of the offender committing additional felonies or misdemeanours during which his situation is an element.

1 If the belongings subject to forfeiture are not out there, the court docket may uphold a claim for compensation by the State in respect of a sum of equal value, which claim may be enforced in opposition to a third social gathering provided that he isn’t excluded by Article 70 paragraph 2.


People of Russian Heritage, Polish Heritage and PThai Heritage.

Mention in the essay if there is any similarity in their healthcare belief. Mention how do they see health and disease and their customs to deal with them, also, discuss how they view dead. How their health care belief affect or influence the delivery of evidence-based healthcare.

Sample Solution


Man in field with bounding box

Blog Home AI & Machine Learning   •   April 24, 2019

How to Create Training Data for Computer Vision Use Cases

For simple computer vision projects, such as recognizing a pattern in a group of images, publicly available image datasets will usually suffice to train your machine learning models. But for more complex CV applications, how can you get the vast amounts of training data you need to create an accurate solution? In this post, we explain training data requirements for computer vision use cases like video understanding, autonomous driving, security monitor surveillance systems, and medical image diagnostics.

For any real-world computer vision application, the key to success is the right quality and quantity of training data.

Abstract photo of facial detection
How do I create the right kind of dataset for my project?

You will need to collect as much real-world image data as possible for your use case scenarios — namely, annotated images or videos. Depending upon the complexity or safety requirements of the solution, this might mean collecting and annotating millions of images.

While leveraging existing open-source datasets like ImageNet and COCO is always a good place to start, the more data samples you’re able to collect for your specific use case, the better. If the use case doesn’t require very specific data or proprietary data, some companies opt to purchase existing datasets from vendors. When there is not an existing body of data available, most companies opt to work with training data providers like Appen. For example, we can deploy our global crowd of workers to collect image and video data using our mobile recording tools, per our customers’ specific scenario requirements, and annotate large volumes of existing image and video data.

With a large, diverse data set to learn from, your ML model will be robust and successful at identifying subtleties and avoiding false positives. This is especially important for solutions like training data for autonomous driving, which must accurately identify the difference between a small child playing in the street and a grocery bag blowing in the wind. In this scenario, there may be color, size, and shape similarities that could confuse your CV system if it isn’t adequately trained.

How much training data do I need for a computer vision solution?

So how many images do you need annotated to train your system? The short answer is that it can range from several thousands to millions of images, depending upon the complexity of the computer vision or pattern recognition scenario. For example, if your CV solution needs to be able to categorize eCommerce products into a relatively small number of coarse-grained categories (i.e., shirts, pants, shoes, socks, dresses), you may only need several thousand images to train it. For a more complex taxonomy of categories — for example, classifying images into thousands of fine-grained categories such as men’s running shoes, girls’ fashion heels, baby shoes, etc. — the system might require several million correctly labeled images to be trained.

How can I improve the quality of my training data?

Image annotation is vital for a wide range of computer vision applications, including robotic vision, facial recognition, and other solutions that rely on machine learning to interpret images. To train these solutions, metadata must be assigned to the images in the form of identifiers, captions, or keywords. In most cases, a human touch is necessary to correctly identify all the nuances and ambiguity that can often occur in complex images like traffic camera reporting and photos of crowded city streets.

Appen’s image annotation tool incorporates AI to significantly improve our image annotation workers’ efficiency. The AI-assisted image annotation tool takes a first pass at outlining the objects in the task. For example, if the annotation task is to mark out the shape of all cars in an image, Appen’s image annotation tool will automatically form lines or bounding boxes around the car, and then the worker only needs to adjust a few points of the car shape if it’s not perfectly aligned. This process is much faster and more efficient than asking a worker to draw the car shape from scratch.

You must also make sure your training data covers every possible real-world scenario it might encounter, so your CV system can succeed in a real-world setting. To this end, there are some methods for enriching your image data that are quite straightforward. Common ways to help train your ML model to cope with the nuances it will encounter in the real world include rotating or cropping images, as well as changing color and light values. Manipulating your data in this way is a simple but effective means for improving your CV system’s performance.

Simulation of object detection in a warehouse
What are the different methods for AI/ML modeling?

Different types of AI/ML modeling methods can consume different types of training data. For the purpose of this discussion, the primary differentiator for data types is the degree to which it has been labeled. Labeling (annotating) image data provides the context the algorithm needs to learn. There are four kinds of ML modeling methods:

  1. Supervised Learning means the model is trained on a labeled dataset.
  2. Semi-Supervised Learning makes use of unlabeled data for training — usually a small amount of labeled data with a large amount of unlabeled data.
  3. Unsupervised Learning uses cluster analysis to group unlabeled data. Instead of responding to feedback, cluster analysis identifies commonalities in the data and reacts based on the presence or absence of such commonalities in each new piece of data.
  4. Reinforcement Learning is a machine learning technique that enables a model to learn in an interactive environment by trial and error using feedback from its own actions and experiences.

The most successful CV systems are usually trained from large amounts of high-quality labelled data with a supervised approach — for example, the deep learning approach. The type of learning model you choose for your project will depend largely on your use case and available resources like budget and personnel.

How can you avoid label bias when training image data?

One obstacle that can negatively impact the accuracy of a machine learning model is bias in the training data. There are several causes of bias that your team should look out for when training your ML model.

Label bias is a common issue for supervised learning projects. It occurs when the dataset used to train your model doesn’t accurately reflect the situations in which the model will operate.

Because it would be nearly impossible to account for every single situation an ML model might encounter, it’s important that your sample training data is not only relevant to your project, but also represents the diversity of the real world as much as possible. In other words, the distribution of your training of your training data needs to match the distribution of real-world data.

To this end, it’s important to consider data distribution factors in your CV training data such as seasonal and trending signals, as well as geographical distribution of data sources. Not accounting for these variables can produce biased data.

What are some available data labeling strategies?

Computer vision technologies have seen enough adoption at this point that a variety of strategies have emerged, each with its own range of requirements and results.

A generative adversarial network (GAN) is an ML technique that’s made up of two nets that are in competition with one another in a zero-sum game framework. GANs typically run unsupervised, teaching itself how to mimic any given distribution of data. This strategy is low-cost and produces large amounts of data, but it can result in noisy data quality and requires in-house AI experts to set the system up.

Another method is weakly labeled data from user behavior signals. This labeling strategy can produce large data sets and reduced cost compared to other labeling approaches, but can also produce noisy data quality and requires a large number of users actively interacting with an existing AI solution while all their activities need to be carefully logged.

Traditional crowdsourcing approaches to labeling data quickly produce large amounts of data for little cost, but can sometimes produce low-quality results — which can negatively impact the accuracy of your machine learning system.

Active Learning is another strategy for machine learning in which a learning algorithm is able to interactively query the user to obtain the desired outputs at new data points. This approach saves on costs, while providing the most informative data for labeling — and typically results in high-quality output.

Two people with bounding boxes for machine vision
How does Appen do data labeling?

Appen offers a fully managed, turn-key data labeling solution for its customers. Combining active learning with crowdsourcing, Appen employs tens of thousands of workers at any given time, resulting in rapid delivery times for labeling large amounts of data. To enable fast time-to-market for your CV project, Appen utilizes an AI/ML-assisted, highly efficient data collection and labeling method, as well as an AI/ML-assisted project management process.

Additionally, Appen provides a training data insight report and data augmentation services to make sure you have the best training data for your computer vision projects such as image or video annotation. The Appen solution features several key process components to help ensure the highest level of data quality:

  • Data clustering/distribution analysis and visualization
  • Data abnormality detection
  • Data bias removal strategy
  • Data automatic augmentation strategy
  • Data labeling instruction recommendation

With comprehensive, easy-to-implement data labeling and project management services, Appen offers an end-to-end solution that can quickly provide the foundation you need to make your CV solutions as accurate as possible.

Are you currently using artificial intelligence to make smarter decisions, build innovative solutions, and deliver better customer experiences? Contact us to learn how Appen can help.

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Mining is a dangerous profession.

This is undeniable. Between 2017-2018 in Western Australia alone, 859 injuries were reported by mining employees, with 4 being fatal. It is difficult to combat this: even when implementing the best workplace safety, mining has risks.

Technology has the potential to reduce mining injuries, simply because automated machines cannot be hurt in the same way as humans.

There is significant distrust towards technology in mining. Specifically: its role in ‘taking’ the jobs of miners. But technology is making mining safer – and it doesn’t have to be at the cost of jobs.

Automation has been making mining safer for over a decade. Rio Tinto famously utilise driverless trucks, reported to operate 1000 more hours in 2016 than traditional trucks. This is largely attributed to the fact that automated trucks do not require food or sleep, and are therefore ultimately more productive.

Automation requires workers to do maintenance and operate machines from remote control centres. Therefore, in return, automation could create jobs to replace the ones it takes.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is becoming more recognised for its uses in mineral exploration. It has the potential do what humans otherwise can’t (or which would be time-consuming, dangerous and difficult). It could also create more employment opportunities, as AI requires training and guidance. This way, AI implementation is creating jobs, without the dangers to human health.

AI generally has more ecological and environmental awareness in exploration than humans. It will reduce mineral mining dangers with problem solving and early warnings.

Using blockchain in mining might sound strange. How exactly can a distributed ledger make mining safer?

Mining supply chains are convoluted and difficult to track. How do we know that sourcing is ethical and sustainable? That the mineral is good quality? Or even that the amount received by the company is correct?

Blockchain can make supply chains traceable. It’s permanent and reliable. It also means that mining operations can be more secure, especially when implemented in conjunction with automation and artificial intelligence.

What are we so scared of?

Every new technology takes traditional jobs – and that’s not easy to accept. In turn, though, it creates others. Throughout history, around 90% of the jobs that humans used to do have been replaced by technology. While the McKinsey Institute estimates that between 400 and 800 million people will have lost their jobs to automation by 2030, many of these jobs will be replaced by new ones. However, around 75 to 375 million of these workers will need to learn new skills.

Injuries in the mining sector cost companies as well as employees. The lesser the financial and physical burden, the more opportunity for job creation in mining.

The reality of the situation is this: a hundred, fifty, even twenty years ago, the world was different. People occupied different occupations, many of which no longer exist. Once, everyday services were provided by humans, but are no longer, such as rail ticket distribution, most factory and assembly line jobs, and cash withdrawal.

Technology can make work easier, safer, more efficient, and create jobs. It’s already revolutionising mining.

To find out more about how technology can help mining, click here.


Write down the various business model of internet

For scope-driven businesses or businesses that create synergy around a particular Customer Segmentit is important that key resources include knowledge about your target audience and a standard set of procedures for interaction and assistance with the group.

Development of financial budgets and projected financial statements d. Produce pay checks and payrolls reports b. Is your customer segment a single or multi-sided market? Its goal was, and is, to provide standards to which all computer hardware and software vendors will adhere, so that the present multiplicity of interconnection and interface practices could be reduced, thus reducing the costs of designing and producing both hardware and software.

Such standards fiats also tend to stifle innovation. Management Information System is mainly dependent upon: Distribution Channels What are the most effective mediums to reach your audience?

Executive Information System b. All of the above 8.

What is Internet Business Model

None of the above 2. One of the parametric test for hypothesis. This approach, not unintentionally, favored incumbent businesses with large market share, emphasized existing proprietary software protocols especially IBM productsand relied on telephony and national PTTs for its conceptual foundation.

An affiliate often recommends or reviews products and posts that information on the Amazon site. Analysis of variance d. A customer can view the products shown on the website.

The customer can choose a product and order the same. Operational Accounting System include: Internet business models are categorized as business-to-consumer, business-to-business, and more recently, consumer-to-consumer. Carefully look at where your business is driving revenue and whether it aligns with your value propositions.

How To: Create A Business Model Canvas

But this is a nice list to get started with. Then rank your propositions in relation to the needs of your customers. What do you mean by balance of payment?

Required you to run UNIX which, at the time, was not used for commercial applications and had only a command-line user interface Had poor security and management features Had too small an address size Therefore the ISO promoted development of OSI how palindromic. Operational Accounting System include: The two kind of swap in the forward market are a.

Explain the role of data warehousing in the functioning of a call centre. Discuss the scope of International marketing.Business Communication Multiple choices: 1.

_____is an essential function of Business Organizations: a. Information b. Communication c. Power d. c. Operational control d. Strategic decision making Part Two: 1.

What are the ‘Strategic Information Systems’? 2. Write down the various business model of internet. 3. What is ‘Network. The Internet protocol suite is the conceptual model and set of communications protocols used on the Internet and similar computer networks.

It is commonly known as TCP/IP because the foundational protocols in the suite are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). This Internet business model relies on heavy traffic to the website.

A company using this model must provide a valuable service that millions of people use on a regular basis (i.e. Google search, Gmail) in order to command high prices from ad space. Internet Business Models in the Future. Different types of business models suit different types of businesses.

A business model is the way that a company sells products to its customers. It describes how a business creates, delivers, and captures value. Business communication is an essential part of a successful company.

Here in Australia, business owners acquire their numbers from an Australian telecom company of their choice. clear communication should always be prioritized. The business plan is the key ingredient for a successful business and is often ignored.

Write down the various business model of internet
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Uniting business and it essay

The Reasonableness of Christianity. Delwiche recounts how inin the United States, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis was created to educate the American public about the widespread nature of political propaganda.

Plus, living standards of average Ukrainians have plunged. Not all followers can become leaders.

Data Protection Choices

Again, WHY is the province of theology, not science. This is the best quality of a leader which he had in him. The most effective way of halting this blasphemy and of enforcing God's command to fill the earth was that of confounding their languages.

The bulk of Book II is devoted to making this empiricism plausible. Things a leader needs to do A leader gets things done through other people. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away.

Florence The Tuscan dialects, including Florentine, are the most conservative of the Italian dialects. This push for a fundamental shift in agriculture comes amid growing concern about the capacity of institutions of agricultural higher education to drive such a transformation.

Noah Webster, America's premier lexicographer, gives many "Shemitic" Semitic etymologies as sources for English words in what was supposed to be the great American dictionary.

Many writers, following Jewish and Arab traditions, locate the Tower ruins at Borsippa the "Tongue Tower"about 11 miles southwest of the northern portion of Babylon formerly a suburb of the city.

World War I essay papers

There is no reason why He should do this. We all can play a role in Uniting business and it essay agricultural education. Iraqi soldiers invading Kuwait did not toss premature babies out of incubators, as The Sunday Telegraph in London, and then the Los Angeles Timesreported, quoting Reuters.

But other phenomena were harder to explain. Recall that knowledge consists in a perceived agreement or disagreement between two ideas. More time and data will be needed until these deep anti-Biblical prejudices can be reduced by facts. Jamaie later to become James Decartes was one of those orphans.

The uneasiness is caused by the absence of something that is perceived as good. After discussing these basic features of language and reference Locke goes on to discuss specific cases of the relationship between ideas and words: After all, Catholicism de-emphasizes Bible reading, so centuries of new Christians were barely aware of Biblical texts about language, or the literal Hebrew roots of their faith.

We will be saved from investigating questions which we could never know the answers to and can focus our efforts on areas where progress is possible. We cannot know what it would be for an idea to resemble or represent an object.

When we get to examine the laboratory reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European roots, or other attempts to reconstruct a Mother Tongue like Nostratic or Proto-World, we'll see how much clearer and more versatile bendable to daughter languages are the words that are not reconstructions but actually exist in the Bible.

Sensitive knowledge has to do with the relationship between our ideas and the objects in the external world that produce them. For example, World War One was started because of many things: After that, we'll concentrate on Edenic words from pre-history.

Chomsky holds that the grammar of a language is a system of transformational rules that determines a certain pairing of sound and meaning. Mechanism Around the time of the Essay the mechanical philosophy was emerging as the predominant theory about the physical world.

The settlement of Shinar could be construed as a partial fulfillment of that command. He blamed all the economic and social troubles on these groups, If he tries to shift the responsibility, he will not remain the leader.

Yet, when combined with the other propaganda strategies, it is another way to withhold information. Therefore, each "race" must have had a long evolutionary history, and it is natural to assume that some races have evolved more than others.

This is nothing new, however, as he points out; All administrations try to seduce and co-opt the media. This long period of fragmentation and the fact that Classical Latin was preferred as the international language of study allowed the various modes of speech to develop on their own until they could almost be called separate languages.

On the surface these seem to be accounts of two quite separate incidents. We must strive to ensure that we use words consistently and do not equivocate; every time we utter a word we should use it to signify one and the same idea. The premier evolutionists and linguists concede that human language and the uniquely human capacity for language is a mystery.

Happiness and health for the young as they turn into adults, for starters.Published: Mon, 5 Dec Introduction. Jimi Hendrix is considered a key force in the 20 century music.

The American rock songster, guitarist and songwriter was born and brought up in Seattle where he practiced most of the basic skills in playing guitar. Ashwin, You write, “Preventing rent-seeking is a problem that both the left and the right should be concerned with.” I’m not sure the cronyist/technocratic dominant species is capable of moving away from its local fitness peak as a result of meta-awareness.

Erdogan is lying about the Russian fighter jet entering Turkish air space.

That darn plane would have had to reduce down to an incredibly unimaginable low speed, long enough for seventeen seconds. During his final news conference ofin mid-December, President Obama criticized Democratic efforts during the election.

“Where Democrats are characterized as coastal, liberal, latte. The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book 4 - The Luminous Ground (Center for Environmental Structure, Vol.

12) [Christopher Alexander] on dominicgaudious.net *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The foundations of modern scientific thought, four centuries old, are firmly rooted in a conception that the universe is a machinelike entity.

For more than 20 years, photographer Matt Black has been exploring issues of poverty, migration and farming in California’s Central Valley, painting a picture of extreme economic hardship in one.

Uniting business and it essay
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Glyphosate’s Role in Causing Chronic Illness

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s popular “broad spectrum” herbicide, Roundup. This herbicide has greatly impacted agricultural methods and is at the root of the rise of chronic illness in the United States. Many genetically modified foods are designed to be “Round up Ready” meaning they are resistant to roundup. As of 2001, Glyphosate is the most used herbicide. Let’s take a look at how glyphosate is causing chronic illness and what you can do to minimize exposure on your path to wellness.

It is generally accepted that the farming land in the Unites States is becoming increasingly more mineral deficient. This idea is used to justify the need for taking supplements daily. But humans are not deficient in supplements. We are becoming deficient in plant based nutrition. By understanding what is causing these mineral deficiencies, we are able to make dietary adjustments and lifestyle changes were all we need is whole foods, exercise, rest, and sunshine to live a life full of vitality.

Monsanto claims that glyphosate is non-toxic. “All Roundup® Weed & Grass Killer products contain the same active ingredient*, glyphosate, which targets an enzyme found in plants but not in people or pets.” This claim could not be further from the truth. However, the damage caused by glyphosate may take years before symptoms appear, so although death is not imminent with ingestion, chronic illness is prevalent with chronic exposure. Glyphosate targets a protein synthesis pathway called the shikimate pathway.

There are multiple pathways by which glyphosate could lead to pathology. A major consideration is that our gut bacteria do have the shikimate pathway, and that we depend upon this pathway in our gut bacteria as well as in plants to supply us with the essential aromatic amino acids, tryptophan, tyrosine, and phenylalanine. Methionine, an essential sulfur-containing amino acid, and glycine, are also negatively impacted by glyphosate. Furthermore, many other biologically active molecules, including serotonin, melatonin, melanin, epinephrine, dopamine, thyroid hormone, folate, coenzyme Q10, vitamin K, and vitamin E, depend on the shikimate pathway metabolites as precursors. Gut bacteria and plants use exclusively the shikimate pathway to produce these amino acids. In part because of shikimate pathway disruption, our gut bacteria are harmed by glyphosate, as evidenced by the fact that it has been patented as an antimicrobial agent. – Stephanie Seneff

Ever been told that you need to supplement iron, folate, coenzyme Q10, vitamin K, vitamin E, vitamin B12, Magnesium, Manganese, Chondroitin Sulfate, or Glutathione? All of these deficiencies are directly correlated to ingesting glyphosate that inhibits the production of precursors necessary to create those nutrients in bioavailable forms. Glyphosate binds to an enzyme, EPSPS, in the shikimate pathway that produces amino acids that are necessary to create bioavailable forms of nutrients listed above.

Glyphosate harms the bacteria and fungus in the soil and in our intestines leaving the soil and our bodies lacking in bioavailable nutrients. This creates a perceived need for fertilizers and supplements. But what we really need is avoid further use or ingestion of glyphosate and to flood the soil with bacteria and fungus to effectively break down the glyphosate. This can be accomplished by creating compost for farmland and ingesting fermented vegetables and mushrooms.

Illnesses that have increased with the use of glyphosate include but are not limited to Lyme disease, Autism, ALS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Anxiety, Mood Disorders, Insomnia, Obesity, Cancer, Tooth Decay, and Mitochondria Disease.

The most common sources of glyphosate in food are Round Up Ready GMO crops and conventionally grown crops that are sprayed with Roundup three days before harvest. Foods approved to be grown as GMOs in the US are corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, sugar beets (can be GMO and labeled organic), alfalfa, papaya, yellow “crook neck” squash, zucchini, “Arctic” apple, and “Innate” potato. Crops that are sprayed with Roundups a few days before harvest include wheat, peanuts, nuts, beans, lentils, and oats. These lists are a baseline, but are not all encompassing.

Conventional animal agriculture feeds their livestock with gmo corn and soy. The glyphosate builds up into the animal tissue and remains in the animal products you buy in stores and at restaurants. If you are not ready to give up animal products, make sure to buy grass fed, free range, organic animal products or wild caught fish.

Organic farmers are not allowed to spray Roundup on their crops, so eating organic is a great way to reduce exposure. However, conventional farmers use aerial spraying techniques that cause contamination of neighboring organic farms. Glyphosate is so prevalent in our society that trace amounts have been found in rainwater. It is not possible to completely eliminate glyphosate, but we can dramatically reduce exposure and support our elimination organs to prevent it from building up in our bodies.

Protect yourself from glyphosate by buying organic and non-gmo produce and going gluten-free. Products high in gluten, such as wheat, barley, rye, and oats are also heavily sprayed with Roundup. Most processed food includes ingredients that are sprayed with glyphosate. For a processed food to be certified organic, it only needs to contain 95% organic ingredients (unless labeled 100% organic). Therefore, even 5% of organic packaged foods could contain trace amounts of glyphosate in the form of gmos or conventional produce. Take control by growing your own garden, boycotting Monsanto, refusing to buy products sprayed with Roundup, and supporting your local organic farmers.

Liver flushes and coffee enemas support your liver and colon thereby increasing nutrient absorption and detoxification of toxins, such as glyphosate. Epsom salt baths help replenish magnesium and sulfur. Sea vegetables and sea salt help replenish trace minerals that are deficient in our soil. By completing a liver flush series, performing coffee enemas, taking regular Epsom salt baths, and eating an organic, non-gmo, whole food diet you can heal whatever chronic illness ails you and return to vibrancy without taking supplements. Nature has innate methods to return to a state of harmony. In agriculture, organic permaculture returns the land to harmony. In humans, organic food consumption and a healthy lifestyle returns our bodies to harmony.

For further reading, check out research by Dr. Stephanie Seneff at MIT. She has published several peer review articles looking at trends involving usage of Round Up.

Say “No!” to Antibiotics

We can only be victims of conventional medicine if we give doctors control over the decision-making process. Whenever I go to a doctor’s visit, I always inform the doctor that they do not have permission to give me prescription antibiotics. After the shock wears off of his or her face, they start to ask what if questions, and my response is always the same. Regardless of the medical issue at hand, I refuse to ingest antibiotics. This stance may appear foolish and short-sighted to those who prescribe or take antibiotics on a regular basis. But I assure, it is not.

If you or someone you know has been diagnosed with Lyme (or any other infection), then I implore you to thoroughly research the negative biological effects of prescription antibiotics and testimonials of other Lyme patients who have taken that treatment path. Before I dive into scientific theory, I would like to share my story.

My Experience with Antibiotics

It was my junior year of college, and I had been fighting a severe sinus infection. It was an infection that started off as the most painful sore throat and turned into a persistent upper respiratory infection. I was under the impression that the infection could not be viral and must be bacterial, since it had been persistent for a month. I setup a doctor’s office, explained my situation, and was prescribed Amoxicillin. Like many others, I had taken antibiotics before and never experienced any noticeable issues, so I assumed this was the safest route back to health. I could not have been more wrong.

Two hours after swallowing the first dose of Amoxicillin, my life changed forever. I was sitting in a room working on homework, and all of a sudden I was hit with an intense feeling of fear. My external environment was calm, but my internal environment had switched into full panic mode. My core muscles began to involuntarily contract and release. I was shaking, twitching, and convulsing as I laid on the floor. Unsure of what was going on, I decided to lay down in bed and wait for the episode to pass. The periodic convulsions persisted, so I headed to the emergency room two hours later.

Overtime, my health deteriorated further. I continued to experience partial seizures. I developed food, chemical, and environmental sensitivities. I began fighting a range of viral and bacterial infections, and was eventually diagnosed with Lyme Disease. My poor gut health lead to a systematic illness that affected every organ and cell in my body. I can only imagine the route my life would have taken if I had simply refused to take Amoxicillin. However, my journey is not in vain. It has inspired me to question treatment methods of conventional medicine and search for a deeper understanding of preventing and healing chronic illness.

The War on Infection

In the mid to late 19th Century, scientists were debating the origin and purpose of germs. Louis Pasteur became known as the father of The Germ Theory. His interpretation of experimental research led him and his followers to believe that bacteria and viruses originate in the environment and are the root cause of disease. Therefore, by killing germs, we can successfully treat disease.

On the other hand, Pasteur’s rival, Antoine Béchamp, created the pleomorphic theory from his own experiments and research. His theory suggests that germs originate from microzyma, organisms that live within the human body (and other organisms) where they usually remain quiescent and harmless. When the body is threatened by a potentially harmful matter and unhealthy terrain, the microzyma morph into bacteria and viruses. The purpose of these germs is to remove the harmful matter, dead cells, and toxins. Therefore, germs are the result of disease, not the cause. We can successfully treat disease by cleaning up the harmful matter, dead cells, and toxins.

On his deathbed, Pasteur admitted that the cause of disease is the terrain, not the germs. If you read about Pasteur’s experimental procedures, then you will find that his research was invalid and unscientific: he injected healthy animals with blood from diseased animals merely demonstrating that you can induce disease in healthy tissue by poisoning the blood with dead cells. For the purpose of this article, we will entertain the idea that Béchamp’s stance holds more truth than Pasteur’s. See the links below for more information on this debate.

Unhealthy Terrain

What determines an unhealthy terrain? The following four factors are the root cause of all disease.

1. Acidic pH
2. Positive electric/magnetic charge
3. Presence of poisons and toxins
4. Nutritional deficiencies

Please Note: Killing off bacteria does not address any of these factors. In fact, killing the bacteria is equivalent to firing an obnoxious, loud spoken maid whose responsibility is to clean your house. When she is gone, you no longer suffer the pain of listening to her ramblings, but your house remains dirty and will gather filth over time.

Result of Antibiotics Use in Lyme Patients

There is a huge controversy surrounding the use of antibiotic as treatment for Lyme Disease. Most medical professionals are taught to prescribe one dose of antibiotics. However, this method consistently fails Chronic Lyme patients who have been sick for an extended period of time. They deal with the toxic effects of killing off the bacteria and perhaps receive temporary symptom relief due to a reduction in inflammation, but the infection always reappears with a vengeance. Desperate, Chronic Lyme patients look for a doctor who will prescribe them multiple rounds of antibiotics over an extended period of time. Alone, this method provides temporary symptom reduction, but always leads to a relapse. Lyme patients who choose the antibiotic treatment path are merely managing symptoms while damaging not only their gut, but also their entire body.

Antibiotics kill the good bacteria in the gut, whose responsibility is to breakdown undigested food. When the good bacteria die, the ability to digest food decreases and intestinal fungus, such as Candida, begins to proliferate. The fungus has the ability to poke holes through the intestinal lining of the gut wall with their tendrils, which leads to a syndrome called leaky gut. At this point, undigested food travels through the damaged gut wall into the blood stream and triggers the immune system to produce phagocytes to break down the food. This puts a strain on the immune system, liver, and kidneys. When the liver and kidneys become overwhelmed, the toxins may circulate and penetrate the blood brain barrier leading to neurological symptoms. In an attempt to clean up the toxic mess, multiple infections simultaneously activate.

Lyme patients may suffer from food, chemical and environmental sensitivities, chronic systematic inflammation, multiple organ dysfunction, decline in cognitive function, anxiety, fear, chronic fatigue, and much more.

Herbal Alternatives for Prescription Antibiotics

To stop the symptom management disease proliferation cycle, it is important to wean off all medications, embrace healing reactions, and focus on nutrition and cleansing methods. There are herbal alternatives that will help decrease the presence of infections by supporting the healing process without killing off the good bacteria in the gut.

Here is a short list of herbal antimicrobials that I have had success using.

• Garlic
• Oregano Oil
• Wormwood
• Clove
• Cinnamon
• Echinacea
• Cat’s Claw
• Cranberry
• Ginger
• Licorice Root
• Olive Leaf
• Thyme
• Cayenne

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but rather reassurance that there is an alternative herbal treatment path that is more effective than prescription antibiotics. By replacing antibiotics with herbs, you are replacing poison with nutrition, thereby replacing death with life.

Lyme Patient Testimonials

“A wise man learns from the mistakes of others, a fool by his own.” –Latin Proverb.

If there is still doubt in your mind about which treatment path to choose, then I encourage you to read Lyme patient testimonials. Look for the long-term results. Who had success and claims to have cured the incurable? Who is convinced Lyme disease is a lifelong battle with inevitable relapses? What approach did they take? Learn from their mistakes and successes as you create your own path.

Resources and Suggested Readings


WSU x AMPATH || Sprint 5 Retrospective

Sams Ships (14)Over the past two weeks, my team continued to discuss what we are working on as usual. We have come to the conclusion that we will add our Search Bar component once there are updates and more of a base to work off of. This was concluded after we realized that the process would be much more efficient. The parameters and details on the search bar would be harder to figure out without making up a base anyways.

Some advice for others who may be working on the same thing would be to try and collaborate or discuss potential orders between groups if one thing may depend on another. That would make it much simpler from the start if possible so there aren’t any clashes or time wasted on doing extra work that could have just been done by one group or team.

In the meantime, I did a little more research on the AMPATH system out of curiosity since we are going to be building onto their work. I found out that there are 500+ care sites in Kenya! It is interesting to think about the potential impact our work may make on how AMPATH carries out their process. Their initiative reminds me of what Enactus at Worcester State strives for when they work on projects to help people or organizations in the community “sustain their own success, connect them with universal health insurance, train next generation medical professionals, and research new breakthroughs and best practices.” Being able to help a healthcare organization is pretty meaningful, especially as a project through my capstone.

A way to tie our 348 course (Software Process Management) with our 448 (Capstone) course would be through now being able to use Travis CI and Heroku. It was interesting being able to experience using these in class and help our peers use it and now be able to use them in our capstone. I think the practice we got was nice because I found that my peers and I were more comfortable with following steps that were written out and explained to us instead of just “going for it.” I have also noticed that our 348 course helped us pay more attention to how we interact with others, which is very useful for the future when we will be working in teams of developers to create or update new technologies. One more thing which I found useful was seeing Travis CI load, and the race against time when it came to classmates pushing code at the same time; it made me push myself to be a little faster while at the same time not be sloppy about what I was putting into my code.

Overall, we discussed what we will do in these coming weeks as the semester comes to a close. The project we are planning on presenting will feature a search bar which we plan to implement by then. I am excited to see what we end up with in terms of helping AMPATH and their healthcare system!

Craft Over Art || S.S. 8

Sams Ships (10)As we have a few weeks left in the semester, I wanted to discuss the more creative apprenticeship patterns. This time I’m going to describe Craft Over Art, which is basically when a solution to a client’s problem can be solved with something that could work…or we could take it and go above and beyond. It’s being more innovative than just settling for a solution just to have something.

I found that the pattern is interesting because it emphasized the importance of how the things built for customers can still be beautiful but must always be useful. If it strays away from being useful, then it no longer counts as the craft.

I also found it to be thought-provoking because it brought up how people are truly in charge of how a problem gets solved. No one can force you to code something a certain way if they do not know a way to solve it on their own, which is why your role exists in the first place.

The pattern has caused me to change the way I think about my intended profession because your work can still reflect you in terms of creativity. As a person, I think I am more on the creative side and incorporating more ideas into creating something for people sounds pretty cool. If I had to follow a super rigorous structure, I may feel limited in what I can do to produce work that makes me happier.

The one thing I have to disagree with in the pattern is the part where it mentions that someone is suddenly no longer “part of the craft” if they deviate a little further. Who sets these boundaries? I do not want people to feel like they are not “enough” to be considered a real craftsman or whichever term it is referred it as just because they were being extra.

Overall, I appreciated the action section which encouraged people to reflect on what projects they worked on or situations they may have found themselves in where they chose creativity over usefulness. At the moments where I have personally done so, I had felt more proud of my work, because I knew it was uniquely mine.

Do You Hate Your Computer Too?

Sams Ships (3)Apparently doctors hate their computers, according to an article titled Why Doctors Hate Their Computers by Atul Gawande. Gawande started out the article by mentioning Epic, a company a lot of people know of because it is a leading provider of software for the healthcare industry. It’s funny because just the other day, a classmate who will not be named groaned when he heard Epic being mentioned by someone, as he works in a healthcare center.

I found the reading was interesting because I have no intentions of becoming a medical doctor one day but was able to hear about how it is being one while interacting with technology that exists today.

It seems like the tension of logging everything caused the system to make doctors’ lives harder instead of easier; this was noticeable when Sadoughi was talking about how she had to look over all notes from different doctors including herself per patient. Instead of being able to just see what is going on right away; it would take up time to gather all information and even then it was not always helpful because some notes were different than others and became dated. And then work-life balance had to be thrown off a little because people had to spend extra time, up to hours after-hours to catch up with the system and review things from the day.

The real customer for the system seemed to be patients because they have some benefits from using the system like logging when to take medications or see how they are doing. Doctors are also able to monitor how they are doing and communicate with them by being pinged.

The lessons from this system do not only apply to Electronic Medical Record systems; they also apply to working in life because burnout can happen to anyone in the workforce. I thought it was interesting how one of the ways doctors were trying to save time and prevent burnout from technology was by hiring in-hospital scribes or even virtual scribes when necessary.

The reading has caused me to changing the way I think I will work based on if I ever end up creating software that affects people’s healthcare by considering how much time it takes to interact with it, no matter how “cool” or “innovative” it may be. In terms of the topic itself, the reading has caused me to think more about software that has altered people’s professions as a whole; which I thought of before but never this deeply.

I do not disagree with anything in the reading for now as I do not personally know what it is like to work in a profession that is not traditionally non-technical and then gets transformed into something that relies on it.

Expose Your Ignorance|| Sam’s Ships S.S.2

Sams Ships (1)For this next installment of the Apprenticeship Series, I wanted to discuss Expose Your Ignorance. This apprenticeship pattern involves being more direct with people to have the faster route on the road to journeyman instead of protecting one’s pride to find other ways to obtain the knowledge they are seeking. When someone exposes their ignorance, they will be able to learn more quickly instead of trying to appear like they are capable.

Based on what I have learned of this pattern so far, my reaction is that it was useful seeing examples of how this happens in real life for people. To me, this was something I thought of before without putting it into a framework of sorts. I found that this was interesting because of the way they explained it saying, “One of the most important traits that a craftsman can possess is the ability to learn, identifying an area of ignorance and working to reduce it.” It shows how ignorance does not necessarily mean they are at fault of something, it just means they are willing to work to move past it.

Taking this as a lesson to think about, the way I work will be pretty much the same. I once almost made a task over-complicated because I wanted to find my own way to work on it instead of just asking another developer for their opinion on whether I was doing something correctly. After deciding to ask for help thought, we figured out that there was a much more simple way of going about it instead of changing a whole system of developing a certain feature. Due to this, I have gained more confidence to ask people when I am uncertain about something because in the end it would save a lot more time and avoid confusion.

I did not disagree with anything brought up in the pattern so far because I believe people should be able to communicate when they are not confident about something or at least ask for clarification. After some thinking, I realized I’ve never expected anyone to know everything so why should I feel like other people should expect the same from me?

The White Belt || Sam’s Ships S.S.1

Sams Ships.png

So you either want to or have already been an apprentice for software development huh? I just read the section on the apprenticeship pattern for The White Belt and it was a nice beginning to approach what we are doing. It reminds me of a quote: “In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or back into safety.” This is us stepping out of our comfort zone as we approach real-life situations and try to help them by starting our journey into development.

A summary of the pattern would be after some time of developing skills, someone may feel that their growth has plateau-d, however there still remains confidence in their abilities to do something. I found that this was interesting because as someone approaching a career where I will be a life-long learner of technology and ways to develop it, I never considered getting stuck or feeling like I was not getting somewhere.

Based on what I have learned about the pattern, I think it will change the way I work based on their advice to set things we have previously learned aside in order to “unlearn what we have learned.” I like the idea of approaching something that is new to be able to fully appreciate it.

I could relate to the situation they describe about sacrificing productivity in order to improve our skills. From on-boarding as a junior developer, it was a different experience trying to do self-learning while getting assigned tasks to work on at the same time. It was interesting trying to find a good divide between learning something while trying to develop things compared to using internet references.

I agree with how they mentioned not basing everything you learn in other languages based on comparing it to a base language that you know. This made me realize how I have been doing this for a while; I sometimes forget that not everyone knows Java or a language that would seem “universal.” It would help take away the stress of thinking in a certain language’s syntax or process; allowing people to just code something that would work more efficiently and effectively.

Overall, I would say that this pattern is nice to hear about in the beginning so people can approach it in a way that allows them to learn things with a fresh start to programming. I also just liked how they called it The White Belt so people can level up.

Adapt or Git Left Behind?

CS SERIES (15)As my last fall semester comes to a close, I wanted to write about an article on something pretty interesting I learned about in my software construction and design course.

On Stackify, Thorben Janssen wrote Design Patterns Explained–Adapter Pattern (with code examples). Overall, this article re-instilled how design patterns make it easier to write more well-structured and maintainable code.

I found it useful to see how Janssen discussed the two different versions of the class adapter; the class adapter pattern (which implements the adapter using inheritance) and the object adapter pattern (which uses composition to reference an instance of the wrapped class within it).

Similar to how we learned the concept in class, something I appreciated is the “real-life” example or comparison used to describe the physical adapters we use when traveling. When we are traveling and do not have compatible power sockets, we must find a way to be able to charge our use our devices without having to change the whole make of it. A way of doing so is by using adapters; which does not change the overall product or device, it just allows you to be able to plug it in.

An situational example that I can think of when explaining adapters is if you have ever been zip-lining or done a ropes course (like Go Ape) where you are attached to a harness. When you are transferring from one line to another, you can use a metal contraption which helps guide you while connecting and disconnecting from paths. That metal contraption serves as an adapter, not changing what you are but allowing you to use something.

I agree with what message Janssen is trying to express about how great design patterns are (the adapter pattern specifically) when it comes to writing code. His content allowed me to think about real life situations in code form when he introduced the basic and premium coffee machines to brew coffee using the adapter pattern. One of the best ways of learning concepts, in my opinion, is to compare it to a real-life situation and then show people visualizations to help them better understand what you are trying to explain and the article did both.

Top 5oftware Architecture

CS SERIES (13)When using architecture patterns, how will you know which one to choose? Peter Wayner, an independent author for TechBeacon takes five architectures that the majority of programs today use and broke them down into their strengths and weaknesses. Through this, it seems like he is hoping to guide users to selecting the most effective software architecture pattern for their needs.

If this article does not clear up enough information, Wayner also brings up a book, Software Architecture Patterns by Mark Richards, which focuses further on architectures commonly used to organize software systems.

The fives types discussed in the article are:

  • Layered (n-tier) architecture
  • Event-driven architecture
  • Microkernel architecture
  • Microservices architecture
  • Space-based architecture

The one I found most interesting is space-based architecture because at first when I thought of space, I was thinking of the other kind. The one with the sun and the stars and the moon. But then I realized–what does that have anything to do with software architecture? Space-based architecture is listed as “best for high-volume data like click streams and user logs” and I think this one is pretty important, especially during times like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I personally experienced the frustration of not being able to access a site (adidas) due to high volume and it really does not help a business.

Another architecture I found thought-provoking is micro-services architecture because of the way Wayner introduced the concept, “[s]oftware can be like a baby elephant: It is cute and fun when it’s little, but once it gets big, it is difficult to steer and resistant to change.” The author providing an example of this made me think about how a site with so many users and things happening at once actually just had many different separate services but they were put together as one. I was a little surprised to think of Netflix in that way after all the times I’ve used it but it makes much more sense now.

Overall, I found all of the information pretty useful and clear to understand as Wayner described what they were and then listed the caveats and what they were best for. I would recommend using this as a reference or quick review of common software architecture designs if someone needs it.